The most influential female business angel in Europe: Estonians are positive and optimistic

Did you know that the winner of this year’s Business Angels Europe (BAE) Golden Aurora Award lives here in Estonia?

Vicky Brock won the award, which is given to Europe’s most influential female business angel. I caught up with Brock at the EBAN Congress in Vilnius this week to find out more about her impact and why she chose to live in this special part of Europe. 

Congratulations on the award. What does the recognition mean to you?

I was really happy and surprised to win, because I'm a founder who has turned angel. I do belong to angel investment groups in both Estonia and the UK, but I'm not a billionaire, so I can't invest as much as I would like. As an angel, investing my own money, I choose carefully where my small amount of investment can have a really big impact.

Mainly, I do that by trying to be usefully visible - I was so happy to win, because it basically gives me a year of being like a Miss World on the angel investment scene, to run around and be usefully visible and champion some really fantastic early stage founders and encourage more women into angel investing, because it's such a fun, independent, rewarding thing to do. I kind of want to be an example to them as well.

Give us a couple of companies you've invested in and what they do.

The very first angel investment that I did was actually in a company in Malawi. I met an amazing farming entrepreneur, Endrina Maxwell of Dwale Agricultural Supplies, who is creating a closed-loop organic farming system, and I ended up buying her sunflower press machines. It was my very first investment, and she's now a really successful sunflower oil entrepreneur in Southern Africa. That was my very first, and probably the craziest, highest-risk one I've ever done. Most of them have been more sensible. 

I like e-commerce, AI, deep tech and data analytics. I've just made an investment in a founder in Cambridge in the UK, Memorify Technologies, who is building technology to help preserve memories and images amongst families, so that's to help people with dementia and people keeping in touch over a distance. She lost her own father, after he died very suddenly, she couldn't access any of his social media accounts, she couldn't access any of his digital memories, and so she's created a tech to help get over that, and I love it.

You're living in Tallinn and working in Estonia… tell us about the companies you're involved with. 

I've founded five companies over the years, one of which is still running. So I have my own business in Estonia that my husband and I co-founded, Vistalworks. We work to prevent illegal trade online, so we look for things that are banned - dangerous drugs, guns, knives that are on the open e-commerce marketplaces. So we try to stop kids from buying stuff that will kill other kids or parents from buying stuff that will inadvertently cause their families harm because they think they're regulated and they're not. I'm also working with Dealum, based out of Tartu, as a product evangelist for their angel investment products.

Why Estonia? Why do you live here?

I've been here six years now. When I first came here, it was because of e-residency. I was looking for somewhere with a good rule of law, a good, easy digital working environment, and it was completely pragmatic. I looked at the best, easiest place to locate my business after Brexit in Europe, and Estonia was the answer. But then I came here to get my office set up, I came during Covid, and I got stuck. I landed on the last plane out of the UK, and I decided this was fate, and I would rent a flat, get a visa, and stay here, and I've been here ever since.

What do you love about Estonia, the tech ecosystem, and living in Tallinn? What's different about it from when you were living in Glasgow, in Scotland?

Estonians might find this hard to believe, but I find it a very positive and optimistic place. Yeah, I find it very energising. I like that people take work seriously and work hard, but they also take going to the beach, grilling, and going to the forest very seriously. I enjoy all of those things. I love the outdoor environment, and I love it culturally.

As Estonians say, ‘I like to get into nature’, and I just find it a very nice quality of life. Anybody living in Estonia knows it's not the cheapest place in Europe, either in relative or literal terms, but it's still worth the trade-off for me. It makes me happy. It gives me energy, and it's a very optimistic place to do business.

What's the dream?

My dream is always to save the world. Basically, I just want the world to be a little better than I found it, whether I do that through my own companies or by helping other people make their companies change the world. I'm not interested in improving advertising technology but in making other human beings and communities have happier, more meaningful lives.